A proper way to finish off our posting for the year with our HR Business Partner at the Skopje office, Ivana Gligorovska. With 13 years of experience as an HR in the IT industry, she guides us through building unique employee journeys. Without further ado, read our interview below to find out what makes her approaches an undeniable part of the people-focused culture we enjoy today.
How long have you been with Polar Cape? Having been an HR professional with a wide range of experience, what made you want to join?
I am in my 6th year of tenure at the company. Each and single one of them has been different, bringing many changes and growth-inspiring challenges.
Before I joined Polar Cape I think, I was at a bit of a crossroad, career wise. After working for 3 other IT companies, I was feeling a bit fed up with the same old repetitive loop of tasks, exceedingly difficult recruitment, and then even more difficult retention patterns. So, I was starting to think that work in some other industry might be refreshing. At the same time, I was not ready to let go of the experience I gained in the previous 6 years as HR in IT.
Polar Cape came as an opportunity while I was weighing my options. A couple of my former colleagues were working for the company at that time. I knew they loved working there but did not know why that was, so I wanted to find out for myself. 😊
How have you changed Polar Cape, and how has it changed you?
Polar Cape came to me as a refreshing experience. At the time Polar Cape Macedonia was a small tightly knit community of 25 colleagues, with amazing energy and company culture. It was a small but already established company, and many of the processes were already in place and functioning. I had the easiest time taking over and fitting in. As the company never had an appointed HR before – hats off to my fellow colleagues who were running things at the Macedonian office and to management for the work they had already set in place. With that said, I never wanted to change Polar Cape. My mission was to ensure we would keep everything that we were doing right, through everything that was about to come.
From here our roller coaster ride started!
When I joined, the company was already in the process of slowly expanding. But what we did not know at the time was that – it would not be so slow! The fast growth created interesting challenges for the company and for me. And as the company was changing so did my role and responsibilities. We needed to make sure that we keep the positive company culture, keep lean policies, and make our existing policies work for a much bigger company. To keep things “interesting” then the pandemic came, which opened a whole new set of challenges that tested our flexibility and the ability to think outside the box. And in the aftermath of the pandemic now we continue to live in interesting times for the global IT world when after a period of exponential growth, we are facing a slowdown.
All of these events kept us on our toes for a while, but I can say it was never boring. And working with such amazing teams, both the management team, and the HR and Admin teams, has made even the toughest questions an opportunity for growth and development.
And with all of this said, Polar Cape changed me by letting me grow. As the company grew, I grew with it. With a flat hierarchy and an accepting culture, my career path was what I made of it day-to-day. I was shaped by the role that I had, but at the same time I was shaping the roles and the HR department at Polar Cape. Now we are a team of 4 people, all covering various aspects. We are in constant coordination and communication, trying to keep most of our responsibilities interchangeable, so that we can help with tasks whenever needed. It is a real pleasure to be working with all of them.
What is unique about the way you approach problems?
I am not sure if it is unique, but I approach problems taking all sides into consideration. I am fast at connecting the dots and seeing the big picture, and then deconstructing it again to identify and communicate with all relevant stakeholders.
That is an absolute priority for roles like mine. We are the buffer between many process lines in the organisation (management, sales, employees, administration etc.). This means that it is up to us to make sure we notice a red flag when something is threatening to hurt one of our processes, or for that matter, recognise when something might improve some of our processes. When communication and policies are set up well in an organisation, this puts us as HR in a unique position to receive all necessary information from every part of the organisation and the market in general. And this allows us to have a holistic business approach. I have experienced this early on in my career and I make sure to use my “superpower” for good and often!
How do you create a balance between deciding what is good for the company at a managerial level, but at the same time, take care of the well-being of employees?
In the long run, what is good for the well-being of the employees is good for the company as well. Happy employees make a successful company. What is important here is to plan, prioritise, and foresee obstacles down the road that might impact the wellbeing of employees, and with that the organisation as well. And when unexpected obstacles arise, we shouldn’t panic, but rethink before acting.
Can you tell us a bit more about how Polar Cape enables growth for our employees?
One of the more unique employee strategies that we value is the Personal Development approach. We truly like to emphasise the ‘personal’ in it. We accept that every employee is unique and because of that allow them to create their own path and set their own pace for growth, in their career, as well as their expertise. The designated Consultant Managers help throughout this journey. They are assigned from day one at Polar Cape. We have Personal Development Discussions two times per year, where we discuss and set our short- and long-term goals.
Now, if you’ve stayed with me to this line, you’ll probably think this is not very different from what other companies do. The difference is that those goals do not have to be aligned with the business at the moment, or the projects that we are currently working on. They can be about learning or working with technologies that we do not even use at the moment. The goals can be about completely changing technology and staring over with another. We want to allow people to try and find what they are missing inside the company. This way, they won’t need to search for it at a new company. Our Consultant Managers guide us through the process of growth and development, at a pace and in a way that we see fit.
This approach is seen as odd to people joining us from companies that are more hierarchal and have pre-set steppingstones that you need to go through to move forward from one level to another. Our Personal Development Plan is not set as a measure of our Performance. If for some reason we do not meet our set goals, it does not reflect poorly on our evaluations. The PDP is directly for our own benefit and only indirectly for the benefit of the company.
Based on the collective PDP’s, we see if there are trends showing up in the company, for development in certain areas, technologies, methodologies, soft skills etc. And we use this data for organising training and academies in the company.
Anything you would like to share with current and future Polar Capers?
I could speak endlessly about the company. The benefits of working here, and how this is a great place to work and explain it from many different perspectives. However, what it always comes down to is the people who work here. What makes it a different workplace is the wonderful colleagues we have here, how we can rely on each other in many different situations, how we can always find a sympathetic ear and a helping hand, and how you can be yourself here and grow and develop into whichever version of yourself you want. And for that I would like to say thank you to all of them!
What’s your favorite work memory?
I was in my second year of tenure at Polar Cape and to our great pleasure we received 1st place as a Great Place to Work® in Europe. Of course, this did not come over night. It was our 5th year in a row participating in the GPTW, and we were religiously following their guidance in order to improve our workplace. So finally, years of hard work paid off by being recognised as Europe’s best place to work in the category for small companies. It was a great moment and honour to receive the trophy on the stage of the Megaron in Athens. It felt like wining the Oscars in HR. 😊
